Audio + Book

Hugo Advanced French

This is truly an Advanced language course. It soon outstripped my limited knowledge of French and forced me to work quite diligently to understand the comprehensive texts spoken throughout the course. Topics chosen to cover are useful for living in France and cover shopping, leisure, education, politics, travel etc. I particularly liked the range of activities used to reinforce the teaching in each lesson. Use of slang, popular phrases and idiomatic expressions are used as well, offering the opportunity to put an everyday style into your language. This is highly recommended.

Hugo in 3 Months: French

This series is a comprehensive look at the French language for complete beginners, and moves apace through the content. It certainly covers all of the required structures, verb conjugations and tenses, with vocab lists, but by the end of the course, it would be hard to retain a lot of the material without substantial repetition. Interesting practice exercises and great native speakers.

Michel Thomas Method Advanced French

The system Michel Thomas develops is a great way to learn structures and grammar of the French language. He uses images and memory aids for remembering 'keys to unlock the boxes if they become stuck'. This is a very easy way into a language and seems to work well. You can progress very quickly through the grammar of the language, and feel competent in constructing sentences with a wide range of verbs in each tense.

Intermediate French by Berlitz

This series is a quick way to progress through the material, listening and repeating phrases, memorising short lists of vocabulary for each section. I found the range of native speakers interesting to listen to, and they pronounce the language very clearly, albeit a little slower than normal conversation.

Ultimate French Review and Practice

A great way to review and refresh your French, from basic to intermediate level. I found the audio very easy to listen to and they recommend you use it without referring to the notes, so the audio is self-sufficient. Great for iPod use. The material is challenging enough to be interesting forcing you to listen to content and form questions, negate positives, write dictation, conjugate verbs but with interesting exercises to do so.